Early in December, Google quietly announced that ‘Personalized Search’ results will now be the default for all users.
Previously this was only available to logged-in Google users based on their web history.
According to Google :
“This addition enables us to customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser. It’s completely separate from your Google Account and Web History (which are only available to signed-in users). You’ll know when we customize results because a “View customizations” link will appear on the top right of the search results page. Clicking the link will let you see how we’ve customized your results and also let you turn off this type of customization.”
The impact of this is that the Google search results seen be an individual browser will now be influenced by that user’s previous searching habits and history.
Search results will no longer be ‘largely’ universal as different searchers will see different results. One person’s #1 search result could be another’s #21, depending upon their searching history!
Does this mean SEO is dead? No!
Personalized Search is designed to deliver the most relevant search results to each individual user. So traditional SEO techniques are still important:
- Make pages accessible and easy to use
- Target with keywords that your target searchers will use
- Build unique content that users will find useful and valuable
- Build in-bound links from good sources
In addition, as Google is now specifically looking at site visitors and traffic, then increased focus on building brand and site loyalty and generating return visits will be very beneficial.
The potential is that Personalized Search will deliver higher quality searchers to your site, i.e. those more likely to be interested in your content and so more likely to convert to clients. Time will tell.
The one certainty is that search ranking reports will become a less useful tool for measuring site effectiveness and reach, and that a much broader range of visitor analytic data will be needed to monitor the impact of a site.
If you would like to discuss the optimisation of your website for the new world of Personalized Search, call WSI on 01928 787026.